Vumbi, tembea, udungu na watoto

So I survived another seven days, who said Africa was dangerous? Today I'm going to try to figure out how to put some pictures up. I've gotten one huge step closer in that my pictures are now on the computer (well, 22 out of about 300) but I'm still a while away from actually showing anyone anything!

This week has been good, Sunday we went to mass. The longest mass I've ever been to! Three hours, they baptised 20 kids and collected tithes in the form of harvest from all the farmers. Interesting but also exhausting, and their pews are even worse than standard ones! After that we visited the head teacherIda's house for lunch. It's nice because he speaks excellent English and we can ask lots of questions about Tanzania and so on.

Tuesdays we visit the school in the afternoons and teach English, this week the kids prepared questions for us to answer. I went expecting things like "What animals are in your country?" and instead got "How many countries are in Europe?" and "What country used land reclamation to get more land?" I crashed and burn on question two... Apparently it's the Netherlands, which makes sense I guess with the whole underwater thing. I said something about countries claiming land from Germany after World War Two. My small way of improving the kids' world knowledge. We also taught them Heads Shoulder Knees and Toes, which was so much fun! We told them to memorise it and sing it to us next week.

Wednesday we visited a woman named Joyce. Every day at work we break at about 10am for tea and chapattis, Joyce is one of the chai ladies. She has a bunch of kids and they have a bunch of kids but I don't know how because there didn't seem to be any men about the place! Lovely lunch of rice and beans. That's what we get served every time we go somewhere, which is fine because we never make it in camp! I can barely cook rice on a proper stove, imagine trying with a charcoal fire.

Excitement of the week was the near killing of Anne Marie. She was cooking dinner aroung the corner of the tent while Mike, Jane and I practised with his bow and arrows. Mike and Jane are pretty good. I have good aim but bad techinique, so if I get it off the string then it goes towards what I'm aiming at but not very fast and not very far. Anyway, Mike managed to bounce his arrow off the tree, which was funny for five seconds until he took off running and we realised that it had ricocheted at high speed towards Anne Marie. It actually did hit her but it was spinning not going straight so it was just the shaft. She said she wasn't worried about something hitting her until she looking down and saw the arrow!

I've had some questions so here are some answers for you all:

Volunteers in my camp: Anne Marie is 28, from Ireland and is a nurse. She's on the ten week programme but started 7 weeks before me so she's only got one week left. Jane is... 27? 20-something , from Australia. She's on the same programme as Anne Marie. Mike is 22, from Ireland. HE's doing ten weeks but started three weeks before me so we finish at the same time. Jen is 33, from England. She's doing the seven weeks with me so we're all safariing together at the end.

Food: We eat so well. Almost all the volunteers reckon they've put on weight because we eat so many potatoes! It's all bread, potatoes and pasta with fresh veges, canned meat and sauces.

Camp: We have a big ex-army tent which is our sleeping area and a rigged up tent for our dining room. The dining tent is open at both ends but it's still sheltered from the sun and wind. We cook beside that tent on two charcoal stoves. If you imagine an oval then put the entry at one of the long ends and the sleeping tent across the other end to the right hand side. The cooking tent runs through the middle, with trees and an open area in front of that (towards the door) and the cooking area to the left. The toilet is at the back to the right (opposite the tent but downwind) and the "shower" is in front of that. Can't picture it? I'll try to put up photos.

Toilet: A hole in the ground basically. Skip the rest if you've got a weak stomach. It's a really deep and wide hole with a slab of concrete on top and a hole the size of a shoebox to squat over. It's really not as bad as it sounds, we bleach it every day so it's clean, but no bleach down the hole because there's a wee eco-system going on down there. It's pretty interesting. There are these giant grubs and we can't figure out if they're going to turn into something or if they've finished as weird grub things. If you read Animorphs then these look like the things that crawled in ears.

Shower: It's just a sheltered space where you can wash yourself with a bucket of usually cold water.

Security: We have a guard all the time at camp, mostly just to keep people from visiting too often. We're a novelty so he makes sure that camp is our space where we can relax without heaps of people. He chases away all the kids who want bottles. "Tupa! Tupa!" They want to carry water in them. We do give away our bottles, but they have to come with their parents.

I think that's it :) If there are more questions let me know for next week!